Apple's market cap crossed the US $500 billion figure on Wednesday (currently at $505.75 billion), which is a new high for a company in the technology industry. It takes companies in the oil&gas and energy sector to get this far, and only five companies have ever crossed the $500 billion mark. To put this figure into perspective, if you combine the market caps of Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, it would amount to $567 billion (while Apple's is singlehandedly close to $506 billion). The phenomenal growth in market cap can be attributed to solid moneymaking product and service lines, backed by good prospects for each of them. The graph below documents this growth chronologically with key events at Apple.

so there is investment of 500 bill in silver fruit mark? and if (read - when) this bubble blows up, will it shake finance markets (read - gobal economic) more than BearStern, Morgan Stanley and AIG together?

Great company. Great products. But man is that thing overvalued! The market/book value must be off the scale. I don't know how indebted Apple is... but there is no reason there will be a major economic crisis once the bubble goes. It will only be (mostly) overinflated stock funds that will take a corrective mark-to-market so the holders of those shares will lose some, but no more than a stock market fall of 5%. (Assuming diversified portfolio and Apple represents 1 of 20 investments in a fund)

so there is investment of 500 bill in silver fruit mark? and if (read - when) this bubble blows up, will it shake finance markets (read - gobal economic) more than BearStern, Morgan Stanley and AIG together?

Click to expand...

investors are moving into commodities that tend to be stable with consumers. Regardless of what anyone here thinks of apple when they release a product people flock to it. So it's stable. That will always draw investors tired of the financial markets bubbles.

While it does seem a bit overinflated but they did take in 108 billion in revenue last year so it's not actually baseless like the dot com bubbles.

seems like technology and oil are drawing the most investor attention right now and walmart, the retail juggernaut doesn't seem to change, always stable but little roi possible.

I would like to point out that AAPL hasn't been steady at these numbers so it's unlikely to stay there. Not a bubble burst, but a drop in price is likely.

It's amazing how much money you can make when your biggest selling products are made by (near) slaves.

Click to expand...

Dude. It's Foxconn. All OEMs that get parts and do business with them deserve the same finger pointing yet I never see any. Give me a break.

Yeah Bonkers I too remember that all too bitterly well when they were damn near bust back in '95ish. I say bitterly because even as a dumb kid I knew then I should buy stock but had no cash. Even a thousand shares would be worth like half a million bucks today.

Dude. It's Foxconn. All OEMs that get parts and do business with them deserve the same finger pointing yet I never see any. Give me a break.

Yeah Bonkers I too remember that all too bitterly well when they were damn near bust back in '95ish. I say bitterly because even as a dumb kid I knew then I should buy stock but had no cash. Even a thousand shares would be worth like half a million bucks today.

Click to expand...

shoot even if you bought a few months ago at 350 you'd have a 31% gain.